NDX 2 + SN 3 or Nova + 250DR to start? (Update Dec 2020)

Agree, and I will add that when listening at the proper volume, man the SN3 does open up and offer substantial benefits over the Nova. It’s just the ability to listen at lower volumes right now that seems to be the handicap. I do think there is warmth and energy at the lower volumes. If I had to describe the lack of “spark” versus the Nova at lower volumes it would would be the attack and transients of the sharper dynamics like the snap of a drum hit or ring of a ride cymbal. Or another thing is the bass at the lower volumes sounds more rounded - while it is still distinct, with the Nova I did feel like there were times I was listening to a Fender P Bass through an Ampeg stack sitting in the corner of the room, just the extra bit of grit and character to the sound at lower volumes, versus a clearer but more rounded presentation of the bass through the SN3 at lower volumes. Like clearly it’s a bass guitar but I’m not seeing the starburst finish on the P Bass or smelling the stale cigarette smoke coming from the Amp cabinet, LOL.

Maybe the XPS/HiCap upgrades close the gap on that. Or maybe it’s just more break in that is necessary.

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Yes I’m in the US near the Canadian border part of the year. If your dealer says SuperLumina is $3k he/she is right. I had Transparent cabling before Naim so it made sense at the time to continue using it. I’m not knocking Transparent, it’s good and can get very expensive quickly, I was just surprised at how I discounted Naim’s stock cables that’s all. They really do work well with their gear. Of course you can spend more $ but I think its prudent to wait some (Just my recent experience).

Yes Naim is a little harder to source here in the US especially 2nd hand, but it’s possible as lots of people move up and down the Naim ladder.
Also if the NDX2 is like my ND5XS2 it also has a slight burn in period! Somedays boring… then WOW.

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For me, 8:30 - 9:00 is about all the volume I ever need. Everything is just right for me.
Word of advice from one of the member in this thread, if you listen to the XPS-DR be prepared to purchase it… :slight_smile:

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I have ‘XPS DR > NDX 2 > Hi-Line > HiCap DR > SuperNait 2 > NAC A5 > ProAc D30RS’ and find there were improvements with the addition of the power supplies but also when started using the ProAc speakers this past March with low volume level listening.

As others mentioned let the system settle down over the next month or two and then demo the power supplies to see if it make in an improvement. So many variables with room size, environment, and our own hearing so I don’t believe there is necessarily one remedy that fits all.

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I think you said EXACTLY what I was trying to describe but couldn’t put into words. Maybe my “lack of warmth and energy” was a wrong description. The lack of bass impact on lower volumes from a drum or cymbal just sounds weak on the low volume and therefor sounds boring to me.
I think we are exactly on the same page.

Unfortunately even after 600+ hours on the clock this didn’t change…

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As a less pricey alternative, what about Witch Hat sending Morgana to the US? Does import duty make it unattractive?

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Great question! I don’t know. Folks in the UK have lots of great options that we don’t have here.

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I had the same experience with my SN3. It really takes a ridiculous amount of time to settle in. After 2 months it now sounds fantastic at low levels.

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Witch Hat might actually know based on past customer’s experience…

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Totally agree. When I’m listening at low levels it sounds louder than it is because it’s so clear I guess. I just get so involved with it. I think the volume pot is around 9 but it’s barely passed 7

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Well I did find out what part of my problem was over this weekend. I had a lot more time to listen at louder volumes and still felt that there was a lack of energy, transients, and color to the sound versus the Nova. At a little over 200 hours now I didn’t feel I should be hearing these things, especially since the Nova was so impressive relatively straight out of the box.

The Nova was so fantastic on bass, particularly “real” electric bass in that 40-60Hz area. So much so that I have added a lot of Marcus Miller, Vic Wooten, etc to my playlist over the past year, And this is an area where the SN3 seemed to be a lot less dynamic even at higher volumes. Just sounded SMALLER and less “in the room” than on the Nova.

I listened to a few songs I know really well yesterday and today at about 90-100dB+ and just was not happy. Marcus Miller - Higher Ground… the horns and organs on this song would just erupt like flames from the speakers with the Nova. The tight bass rattles your teeth and you can hear the tactile wound bass strings on the neck of the bass guitar. With the SN3, there seemed to be no excitement in the horns and organs,. The bass sounded so small and frequency range seemed compressed.

Another track - “US 41” from Tom Petty & The Heartbreaker’s Mojo album; starts out with a simple acoustic guitar strumming and Petty’s vocal is EQ’d in a “radio” effect. But then the whole band kicks in and it will just floor you, like a hammer swing out of nowhere… On the SN3, the acoustic guitar sounds fuller and more realistic but then when the bass, drums, guitars, and harmonica swing into the mix again sounding small and not exciting, almost like a grey veil over the mix versus what I’ve been used to.

Finally one song I know better than maybe any other song, “Standing on the Corner of the 3rd World” by Tears for Fears, a showcase for Pino Palladino’s fretless bass work, with runs and harmonics throughout the entire song - but also with tons of atmosphere, Fairlight samples, handclaps, chimes and Manu Katche doing some amazing percussion work from very distant brush work on the snare to explosive tom fills out of nowhere. All that detail seemed to be covered in a bit of a background haze, with Pino’s harmonics staying very 2 dimensional. At the end there is a massive bass riff that is doubled with a fuzzy synth bass that - on the Nova, which is the first time I ever heard this detail - is very subtle but changes the whole feel of that riff. The doubled synth bass was barely audible even at high volume level (close to 10 o’clock on the SN3 volume).

This has turned into a long post but the bottom line is that I went back to what was the ONLY thing different between the Nova and the NDX2/SN3 and that was the Transparent cabling. I was using the Transparent DIN cable between the NDX2 AND SN3. BUT I had also gotten some new Transparent Super speaker cables as part of the deal which were replacing my trusty Triode Wire Labs speaker cables.

Both the DIN cable and the Super speaker cables have these giant egg crate-sized network boxes on the cables, I believe to reduce noise. However I suspected that they may have been contributing to the dull energy and lack of spark and snap in the songs I knew very well.

So I replaced the Transparent DIN with the stock Naim DIN and swapped out the Triode Wire Lab cables and YES, there was the snap and crackle of transients of horns and organs and snare hits and the bite of the bass guitar back again, and the improvements of the SN3 over the Nova are now able to stand out much more clearly. I think the Transparent network stuff may have just been overkill on the Naim gear. Also the Triode Wire Labs speaker cables are an excellent match with my Volti Rivals (the owners of both companies work together on synergy between the cabling in the crossovers etc of the Volti speakers) so I think that a high current amp like the Naim is better matched with the TWL cables than the Transparent cables.

Anyway that’s my epic observation at 200 hours. Having returned to the TWL cables and stock Naim DIN I am much happier with the sound, that grey miasma is gone for the most part. There are still some areas of the NDX2/SN3 I would like to see continued improvement on over the next few weeks of break-in. But I am a lot more confident now than I was 48 hours ago, when I was at a point where I just didn’t really feel like listening much because of the above stated issues.

So onward and upward.

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WOW! I’m so happy the swap has helped you. Let me know the next thing to replace (since I’ve gone down this road).

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Definitely try some NAC A5 with the SN3 from your dealer on a home lone. This will give you what you’re missing i suspect, that final bit of icing on the cake as it were.

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Very dynamic song BTW that one from Tears for fears. No problem at all hearing all that glorious detail at a fairly low volume (around 7:30-8). Love how that drum brush stroke is distant in the soundstage.

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I would suggest that with a Naim system, you should always start out using the supplied cables that are included in the box, and some Naim speaker cables. They may not look exotic or sexy, but they have been chosen because they will allow the system to work as Naim intended. By all means experiment with alternative cables if you feel the urge, but then you will have a benchmark against which to compare them. This is particularly important with speaker cables for the reasons explained here:

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I moved from a Nova to SN3/HC/NDX2/XPS very good sound and significant improvement in SQ.
Have now upgraded to 282/300dr/Supercap.
I think you’ll lose as much money adding a 250 to a Nova as going for an SN3 because the upgrade to a 250 isn’t, to my ears, that much better than the SN3 so you’ll lose as much on the 250 as the SN3 route as you’ll only be happy with the 300dr.
One of the best upgrades I’ve made is using WH Morgana and phantom cables.

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I will look into seeing if there are ways to get the WH cables in the US. I did go for the SN3 vs adding the 250 to the Nova as building out/upgrade path for separates was far more than I’d ever be able/willing to spend (here in the US your system including the NDX 2 is nearly $40,000). I’m in a little over $12K with this system but thanks to selling/trading up from the Novas there was no cash out of pocket for the upgrade. My last big expense on the system will likely be HiCap/XPS DR at some point down the road.

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Your posts nail it every time. Exactly same experiences as I had. Not the cabling but how you describe the sound and what is / was missing.
Keep us posted please on your journey and how the sq develops when you have more hours on the SN.
I have the witchhat phantoms which certainly helped to put more energy into the sound but still it kept having a boring midbass it seems. I removed the Gaia III feet from my speakers which seemed to help a bit too. I put back the Nova now and it just seems more musical and punchier than the Supernait 3. Also my XS3 seems to produce better punch and energy than the SN.
Putting the SN on the floor instead of cabinet also made it sound better. Still experimenting with things in the hope to find that magical click where everything snaps into order. Maybe a WitchHat Morgana DIN cable will solve things. Hope to be able to try this in the near future.

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Thanks… I am going to just be quiet and listen for the next few weeks. I have seen the improvement with the removal of the Transparent loom, and I may keep my eyes open for some NAC A5 speaker cable (there are a couple listings on Audiogon right now). I’m just concerned that to really see the step up in overall fidelity from the Nova to the SN3, there has to be a higher overall volume with the SN3 to allow the music to come forward the way it does with the Nova. There ARE things it does better at any volume - namely a bigger space in the mix, the ability to hear “around” a lead vocal (the ambience from behind the voice) and reverb… there is a more forward sound to the outer edges of the soundstage as well. But I was expecting just “more” of the Nova - a bigger, better Nova - by going to the SN3 and it does seem that the overall character of the sound is inherently different between the two.

Looking down the road, I’m apprehensive about having to experiment further with another $8,000 in power supplies between the XPS & HCDR in hopes of getting the sound I want, versus just “more” of the SN3. I’m not ready to cut my losses at this point, I do want to give it a fair shake. But I do wish I had held onto ONE of the Novas, haha.

Good idea. I’d hold off on Power supplies for now as well. One inexpensive thing you can try (you may have already) is to also run the stock power cables instead of the Transparent ones.

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